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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Starting Over, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“Alright, you
two, strip!”

“What?” Lu
asked, shocked. Looking from Teaspoon to
Louise he noticed she was already reaching for the buttons on the man’s shirt
she’d donned that morning, quickly and efficiently slipping each disc from its
hole. As the shirt began to gape open,
he gulped.

“Just do what he
says,” Lou muttered.

“Only to yer
longjohns, boy,” Teaspoon said sternly.
“Though, the good Lord knows I’ve caught the two of you cavortin’ around
in less more times’n I kin count.”

Quickly
realizing there was going to be no talking the older man out of this course of
action, Lu began to remove his shirt as well.

“Better hurry it
up, there, Kid,” Buck said as he walked past the trio carrying an armful of
chopped logs. “You don’t get them duds
off fast ‘nough, Teaspoon looks mad enough ta light them on fire, stead of this
firewood.”

In a matter of
moments, Teaspoon was shoving the reluctant duo through the door of the
sweatlodge, muttering as he ducked through it after them.

Lu looked around
the hut curiously. On one side there was
a bench of sorts, next to a bucket of water and a pile of stones. Buck was kneeling in front of a firehole in
the center of the sweatlodge, coaxing the wood he’d just brought in into a
flame. Once it was burning steadily, he
began setting the stones in and near the fire.
It was no wonder they called it a sweatlodge, Lu thought, tugging
ineffectually at the collar of his longjohns.
He hadn’t been inside for more than a couple minutes and already could
feel sweat trickling down the back of his neck.

“Sit down,” Louise
hissed at him from where she’d dropped into a crosslegged seat across the fire
from Buck. Teaspoon kept on moving until
he settled on a stool near Buck.

Clumsily trying
to figure out how to move in the cramped confines of the hut without stepping on
somebody or something, Lu finally managed to settle on the ground near Louise,
although he left a wide margin between them, fearful of what might happen if he
got too close to his volatile wife.

“Now, you two
been fightin’ like cats ‘n’ dogs since ya both come back ta town,” Teaspoon
began.

“Wait a minute,
you can’t exactly blame that on me,” Lu complained.

“Wouldn’t be a
problem if he wouldn’t keep stickin’ his nose where it don’t belong,” Lou said
at the same time.

“Enough!” Teaspoon glared at the two pointedly. “Sittin’ in here has a way of helpin’ people
think through their problems. And I
believe you two need to do a powerful lot of thinkin’. You can just stay in here until you’ve
settled things between the two of you, leavin’ the rest of us out of it!”

“Wha-” Lu opened
his mouth to ask about the children, but Teaspoon held up his hand for silence.

“No deals,
Kid. You either, Lou. The boys and me’ll take care of everythin’
and everyone out there. You two just
deal with you. Buck’ll be in occasionally
ta tend the fire, but he’ll knock real polite-like ‘fore he comes in. So you’ll be real private in here. If yer here long enough, Polly or Rachel’l
bring ya some food and leave it outside the door. But you two ain’t leavin’ ‘til ya can act
civilized again.”

Without another
word, Teaspoon stood up and walked out of the hut, Buck
right behind him. Lu turned at the sound
of a soft huff behind him. Louise had
flopped down on her back, blowing a stray lock of hair out of her face as she
did so.

Noticing his
attention, she grimaced. “Might as well
get comfortable. We’re gonna be here
awhile.”

“How long?”

“’Til we settle
whatever it is Teaspoon needs us to settle,” she shrugged.

“What’s that?”

“Dunno,” she
muttered, throwing an arm over her face.
“I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me
when supper’s here.”

**********

Lu watched this
bewitching, bewildering, contrary woman who was his wife. He couldn’t figure her out. They’d been stuck in this damned sweatlodge
for most of the day now. He’d given up
trying to maintain propriety and shed his longjohn top along with the rest of
his clothes. Louise had simply slumbered
on in her corner of the lodge.

But it had not
been a peaceful slumber. Dreams had
often invaded her sleep, some obviously pleasant to judge by the smile that had
occasionally graced her gamine features, others even more notably nightmares
that had made her cry and cry out in fear and anguish.

Lu rested his
chin on his upraised knees, his arms wrapped around his legs as he pondered his
wife. He wished he could figure her out.

“You two ready
ta come out yet?”

Lu turned his
head in the direction of the lodge entrance, where Teaspoon had poked his head
through the door. He said nothing, just
met the old man’s eyes before returning his own gaze to his snoozing wife.

Lu didn’t
respond to the old man’s comments. After
Teaspoon had left, he reached out one arm and tapped Louise on the arm she’d
flung over her eyes.

“No! Don’t touch me!” she shouted, coming up
swinging, even as she scooted back on her bottom until she was pressed up
against the back wall of the lodge. She
scrambled in the dirt around her, looking for something with a frantic, though
silent, desperation.

Lu held up both
hands, showing he had no weapons as he said quietly, “You said to wake you when
Teaspoon brought supper.”

The sound of his
voice seemed to bring her out of her terror as Louise’s eyes focused on his
face. Her entire body deflated, whether
in relief or disappointment, he wasn’t sure.

Without looking,
Lu picked up one of the two plates Teaspoon had set down next to him and handed
it to Louise. She took the plate with a
muttered, “Sorry. You surprised me.”

“Seemed like a
bit more than a surprise. You were
scared to death of somethin’,” he commented, picking up his own plate.

“Well, life
ain’t ‘xactly been easy since ya left,” she said, barely audibly, shoving the
beans around on her plate without taking a bite.

Lu set down his
plate, untouched. Her defensive posture and despondent tone of voice hit him
somewhere in the region of his stomach, turning it in somersaults that stole
his appetite.

“Tell me about
it,” he asked quietly. “Tell me what it
was like.”

She set her
barely touched plate down on the floor and wrapped her arms around her own
legs, resting her chin on her knees, unwittingly mirroring his earlier
contemplative posture. She closed her
eyes and sat silent for several moments, so long Lu thought she’d changed her
mind and had decided to go back to ignoring her presence. Then, she began to speak.

“You never did
understand why I wouldn’t go with you,” she practically whispered. “That’s what we’d agreed to when we got
engaged. If the war wasn’t over by the
end of the year, you felt you had to join up, protect your homeland. I couldn’t stand the thought of you riding on
without me. So, we’d planned to go
together. But then, things changed.”

She was pregnant.
Lou stared into the mirror over their dresser in Rachel’s house, one
hand pressed firmly over her still flat belly.
It was hard for her to imagine a child there, growing safe and sound
beneath her heart. But the doctor had
been so sure that’s why she’d been feeling poorly lately, not the flu or some
other illness. A baby.

Her eyes flitted over her shoulder to the saddlebags
out on the bed, half packed for the journey to Virginia they’d planned to start
in a couple days. She could feel tears
slipping down her cheeks. She’d begged
him not to ride off without her, but now she’d have to either convince him to
leave her behind. No way was she going
to ride into a war zone with a babe in her belly to worry about. This war had already dragged on months longer
than anyone had ever expected.

“That night
after supper, I told you I wasn’t goin’.
You begged and pleaded.” She let
out a strangled half-sob, half-laugh at the memory. “All those years of trying to keep me in
safety and now that I was determined to stay out of harm’s way, you wanted me
to go.”

She finally
raised her eyes to meet his and he saw a pain there that made his own heart
ache in a way he hadn’t known it could.

“I couldn’t
watch you leave. And I couldn’t tell you
why I had to stay. You didn’t
understand.”

“No, Kid,” she smiled through the tears gathering in
her eyes. “It ain’t ‘bout you and it
ain’t ‘bout no one else. I… I just can’t
go. I need to stay here for now.”

She stood up on tiptoe to press her lips to his in a
goodbye kiss that was tearing her heart out.
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him as he
returned the kiss tenfold. But eventually,
they had to come up for air.

Stepping back from him, she straightened his coat,
whisked non-existent dust off his shoulders, then turned to the bed and,
picking up his hat, carefully set it on his head.

“You go do what you have to, Kid. You protect your Virginia. Then you come back home to me. Just as fast as you can, you fly home. And then you’ll see, everythin’ll be fine.”

Kid reached out to her, opening his mouth to make
one last attempt at convincing her to come along, but she reached out and
pushed at his shoulders, urging him out their bedroom door.

“Go,” she said quietly. “You know you need to.” Then she closed the door behind him, stifling
the sob that threatened to burst out.

She moved over to the window, reaching out with one
hand to push the curtain just slightly aside, just far enough so she could see
him saying goodbye to Rachel, Buck, Teaspoon and Polly. Even as he mounted up and began to ride out,
he kept turning his head back toward their window, a question on his face. A question she couldn’t answer. When he was finally out of sight, she let the
tears go, flowing down her face without stop.
Watching him ride out without her had been the hardest thing she’d ever
done in her life.

“If you’d known
‘bout Mary Kate, you’d’ve stayed,” Louise whispered. “And you would’ve been miserable. You could never have lived with yourself if
you hadn’t gone. I knew that about
you. But I simply couldn’t risk her life
to go along.”

She lapsed into
silence, reliving the pain of that cold, January morning when the light had
gone out of her life. She’d thought
she’d moved on, but telling the story to the man she’d thought lost to her
forever had brought back all the pain and fear she’d felt that day.

“Once you’d been
gone a week, I told everyone else why I’d stayed,” she finally said, picking up
her story once again. “They weren’t
happy with my choice, but seemed to understand.
Things were about what you would expect for the next few months, for a
town torn, much like the rest of the country, in two by the war. A lot of people didn’t approve of you goin’
off ta fight fer the South at all. And
then when I started showin’, they started gettin’ nasty. There were even a few threats. I’d never thought to feel in danger here, and
I doubt Teaspoon realized what some folks were sayin’ or he’d’ve interfered.”

She paused to
shake her head a moment, stealing herself for the next portion of the story.

“That’s why,
when news came that you’d been ….. k-killed in action… I knew I needed to
leave.”

“Wel, well, if it ain’t the pretty little Seccesh
Widder.”

Lou ignored this latest of the many taunts hurled
her way recently, although always well out of Teaspoon’s hearing and
reach. She missed the days when she had
the run of the town, a gun on her hip, friends at her side. She’d learned over the last few weeks that
this town couldn’t accept her, not now, not in the middle of this war, not as
she truly was. She fought the returning
tears. She was tired of crying. It seemed like it was all she’d done since
she’d gotten the letter from Kid’s commanding officer with the news Kid wasn’t
going to be able to keep his promise and come home to her.

“You ain’t no friend of mine,” Lou growled, trying
to keep a lid on her temper. “Now, let
me go ‘fore I do somethin’ you’ll regret.”

“I think what this little filly needs is a lesson in
respect,” her captor said to his companion, a man Lou recognized as being the
eldest son from a farm just outside of town.
“What ya say we teach her?”

The farmboy grinned enthusiastically. Lou stiffened, glaring a warning at the duo.

“I’d suggest ya let me go, ‘fore the Marshal comes
along,” she gritted out. She hated
relying on the threat of a man to get out of this situation but knew it would
be simpler than trying to fight her way out.

“What? That
ol’ coot? He’s prolly asleep at his
desk, like usual,” the farmboy laughed.

“D’you put out fer the ol’ man, too, little
gal? Or was it just them other Express
boys you was friendly with? Wonder which
one of ‘em’s responsible fer this little bun o’ yers?” Her captor used his free hand to rub across
the rising mound of her belly. Turning
his head to his companion he added, “No wonder that husband of yers took off ta
fight with the Rebels. I’d run away too
with a wife like you at home. But, heck,
I don’t mind helping myself to somethin’ done been given away ta so many
already.”

He started to lean in to kiss Lou, a leer smeared
across his features. She’d had enough. Stomping down on his instep with the heel of
her shoe, she shoved her elbow into farmboy’s gut to make room for her escape,
and twisted free of her captor’s grip as he howled in pain, hopping on one
foot.

“Next time I’ll have my gun on me and ya won’t get
away so easy,” she warned from a safe distance.
“I’d suggest ya stick to the workin’ gals down at the saloon, from now
on.”

Turning, she
hurried on down the street, shoulders back, head held high, refusing to
let the folks in this town see her cowed.
Despite the relatively crowded boardwalks, no one had lifted a hand to
help her during the confrontation. She
knew what she was worth in this town.
She needed to get herself and her child out of there.

“But when I went
to the bank to withdraw our savings,” she said in a monotone, “the banker told
me he needed proof you were dead ‘fore he could release our money to me. Said I didn’t have no right ta touch a man’s
life savin’s without his permission.
Never mind half that money was mine and we’d put the account in both our
names, he said it all belonged to you and I couldn’t touch it until you’d been
gone at least seven years.”

“What did you
do?” Lu asked.

“I waited until
Teaspoon and Polly were out of town fer the day,” she answered, finally
focusing on Kid’s face rather than the memories she was reliving. “They like ta take a day every couple weeks
or so ta get away by themselves. I
packed up Jeremiah and Teresa, saddled our horses and rode out of here with
nothin’ but the scant supplies in our saddlebags and the gun on my hip. Headed to St. Joe, figured ta disappear in
the crowds there. But, I couldn’t find a
job. Not even scrubbin’ floors. No one really believed the children were my
brother and sister, or that I was a war widow.
So, when I got the chance to work as a trail cook on a short cattle
drive to Omaha for a local rancher who’s cook had taken sick, I jumped at it.”

She sighed. “And that’s where I ran into Sam, who was
visitin’ the Territorial Governor. He
was ready ta telegraph Teaspoon right away, then drag me home ta Emma. But I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t need, didn’t want their pity.” With a laugh, she added, “I’m just lucky he
believed my bluff that I’d disappear again if he tried. Truth was, I didn’t have enough money ta
relocate again at the time. I barely had
enough ta keep us in the boardin’ house we was stayin’ in fer the next week.”

“And that’s when
you started workin’ for him?”

Louise
nodded. “It was steady work, paid well. That first job I worked as a hotel maid,
tryin’ ta get proof that a local landowner was cheatin’ folks outa their
land. I found the papers that proved he
was guilty just days before Mary Kate was born.
I was able to take a month or so off while waitin’ fer the trial. Then, we moved to a new town and a new
case. We’ve been movin’ all over this
territory every few months for years now.
We stick around long enough ta get the evidence we need ta put the bad
guys away, stick around ta testify at the trial, then move on as soon as Sam’s
got a new case fer us. Rather than pay
me by the job, like most Marshal’s, Sam pays me a little less but keeps me on
all the time. Not that there’s ever much
time when I ain’t workin’ a case.”

“Tell me about
Mary Kate,” Lu pleaded. “It’s hard to
believe I have a little girl out there.
I always wanted children. I guess
that’s why I stuck around after helpin’ Lydia deliver Carl. I just couldn’t leave the boy fatherless when
I had nowhere else to go, that I knew of, anyway.”

Picking at
something on the ground next to her, Louise lowered her gaze to her restlessly
moving hand. “Tell me about you,
first. What happened? At least, the part you remember.”

The Author

Who am I? A Hispanic broadcast journalist, current host of Kansas Week on KPTS, and certified high school teacher, a writer and lifelong lover of all things historical, particularly the Old West. I'm married to a wonderful man from Germany and we have a 17 yr old son. We have two rescued cats and a rescued pooch, who thinks she's a 70 lb lapdog. I'm prone to talk about anything and everything that catches my interest.